For Freshmen. By Freshmen.

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College is fantastic. It's this amazing time of growth and opportunity and finally being on your own. For the first time in your life feeling like the adult, at your age, means you really are. But just because we love where we are now doesn't mean we have to forget the good things about where we came from. Nostalgia for high school is running rampant in these first few months of college, and you know what? That's okay. So let's take a minute to reflect on the things we actually miss before we run headfirst into our next exciting student org meeting.

1. The Reliable Routine

It's easy to love the freedom you have in college, but there's something to be said for the familiar comfort of a high school routine. You knew where you'd be and when, and at the end of the day you could always come home to your own bed (a bed that probably wasn't lofted and accessible only via a rickety ladder).

2. Easy Access To Athletics

In college, you really have to be quite good to be on a school sanctioned team. For most of us, this is an impossible dream even if we played varsity in high school. Collegiate club sports do exist and they are wonderful, but there was something really amazing about being an athlete and being able to compete for your high school (even if your skill level was a little sub par).

3. Your Parents

Let's face it, guys - now that we're out on our own, we're appreciating our parents in a plethora of new ways. Even those of us who were primarily independent in high school probably miss the easily accessible familiarity of the people who raised us. Sometimes you just need your mom, and a FaceTime doesn't always replace a hug.

4. Your Pets

Some of us probably miss these furry guys even more than our parents. Sharing your bed with a cat or coming home after a long day to a dog waiting for you with a wagging tail are some of the best feelings, and most of us are deprived of animals now that we're at college.

5. Seeing Familiar Faces

This varies based on the size of your college and high school, but it's safe to say that most of us are in much larger places now than we used to be. No matter how much our constant contact with our high school classmates annoyed us, we still have to admit that it was nice to see so many familiar faces everyday; you could grow accustomed to who you'd pass in the halls and when. You didn't have to worry about constantly making a new impression.

6. Easier Classes

Some of us went to incredibly rigorous high schools or loaded up our plates with AP classes, but that said it's still a given that our higher education will be more trying. Personally, I've done more studying in my first month of college than I did in my entire senior year. Going from classes for which you barely had to study to those that demand thirty pages of reading a night can be a bit of an uncomfortable transition.

7. Driving

In high school many of us drove pretty much everywhere, but in college town cars are a lot less common. Many colleges discourage the use of or flat out don't even allow students to have a car. Now while walking everywhere is nice for your health, it's easy to miss being able to go to a restaurant more than a mile away. Public transportation is a wonderful thing, but the comfort of your own vehicle sounds pretty satisfying after riding awkwardly on a late night bus with total strangers.

8. High School Teachers

I've already met plenty of wonderful professors, but I still find myself missing my high school instructors. In high school many teachers were well-known and well-loved, and because you saw them every day it was easier to develop a personal relationship. Let's be honest, a high school teacher with only a few classes of thirty or so students is able to much more easily invest the time it takes to get to know their students than a professor with three five-hundred person lectures.

9. Knowing Where You Belong

At the end of the day there was a comfort to being used to high school, even if at times it seemed pretty mundane. Many of us grew up in the same town for most of our lives, spending years cheering for our sports teams, getting to know our classmates and feeling deep connections to the places we grew up. It can be hard to let that go, no matter how exciting and wonderful your new college life is.

Haley Young is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin Madison and loves everything about being a Cheesehead. Writing is her biggest passion, but she's pretty fond of bad puns and Christmas lights too. You can find out more about her and her work at Clompish.com.

Fresh U is an online publication for freshmen, by freshmen. We’re focused on content meaningful to freshmen, something overlooked by general college websites or school newspapers. This isn’t just an online destination for freshmen - Fresh U gives freshmen the opportunity to become published writers and to be involved in the process of running their own publication.